The woman at the well

It all happened a long time ago now, and, if you'll forgive the pun, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. I've made a lot of friends that would hardly have been considered possible in those days, and my life has taken many crazy turns. Everything is different now. Everything.

But I expect you want to know how it all began. For me, it began with a walk in the desert to get water. A long, hot, noonday walk. I lived in Sychar, a small village, near Shechem in Samaria. It was a village which had a well, but on that day, something drew me towards the other well, memories perhaps. So I went to the other well, the one that lay in the fork in the road on the way to Nablus. I took my travellers bucket, the one made of animal skins sewn together and I headed off on the dusty road full of memories of happier times. For this other well had a history. When I was a child my grandfather sat me on his knee and told me the stories behind it. Jacob had made the well, such a very long time ago, and since then it had never run dry. Never. No matter what troubles our people had been through. And, the Almighty knows, I've had my share of those. Joseph was buried near there too, another reminder for me that somehow things could turn out right. The well was deep, more than a hundred foot deep, and when I was a child I had dropped pebbles down the hole and waited with my head resting against the stone wall, for the splash to return. I counted one...two...sometimes I had reached twenty before I heard the splash.

As I neared the well I saw a man sitting with his eyes closed, leaning against the wall. He was Jewish by the look of his clothing, but, in all my life I don't remember anyone ever looking so weary. He looked as if he was carrying the woes of the world on his shoulders. I approached the well quietly, so as not to disturb him, but he turned and looked up at me. "Will you give me a drink?" I could hardly believe my ears. This man must either be desperate or mad. He must know he would be classed as unclean if he took a drink from my cup. Maybe I should explain a little. I am a Samaritan, and the enmity between our two peoples goes back a very long way. Back to the time when Assyria conquered us, and filled our land with strangers. Our people made the best of it, and married them,but to the Jews we had commited the worst crime, we had watered down our bloodline, our inheritance. They hated our teachings too, for we only had 5 books of scripture. Genesis, Exodus and the law books. Nothing else. No prophets, no psalms. And so the Jewish teachers thought us worse than pigs or lepers.

So I asked the man why he would do this? And to my surprise he talked of God and of living water. He must be a Rabbi. My amazement grew still further. For Jewish Rabbis never spoke to women in public. It was unheard of. Some Pharisees wouldn't even look at a woman in public, even if it meant closing their eyes and crashing into a wall. This man was different. And as we talked I felt myself warming to him, he was so open, so honest and direct. He told me his disciples were in the village buying food, he talked of their physical journey, their spiritual one too, how this mixed bunch of Northerners would never have bought food from Samaritans a few years ago,but deep down they were learning to love, to change. And it showed itself in little ways now. I asked him more about the water, for I wondered what he meant by this. Perhaps I was being dense, I was so dazzled by him. I thought maybe he meant some underground running stream that looked alive in the way it danced. Water from a stream is always better. So I challenged him, perhaps a little tongue in cheek. Was he cleverer than our ancestor Jacob, who built our amazing well? And so he explained. He told me of water that could quench a thirst forever. Of springs of water flowing deep inside. And so I asked for that water. Of course I would! To never have to trek to the well would be wonderful....yet something within me felt, as I asked that question, that actually I was asking for something else, giving him permission to show me something, I wasn't sure what. I shivered when he replied "Fetch your husband," for he was straying into territory I I wasn't sure I wanted to visit. And so I told him that I hadn't got one. I was scared. And yet part of me felt that this had something to do with the water he had mentioned. My eyes widened with wonder when he came out with the truth. How could he possibly have known? That I had had five husbands, and a lover who wouldn't marry me. Yes, I had secrets. And the strange thing was that they mirrored the history of my people. The five nations and their strange gods that my people had flirted with. And our hit and miss love affair with the One True God, the one, to be honest, we weren't sure would even accept us. Yes I was scared, and overwhelmed by the weirdness of it all. I changed the subject, and as is often the case at these sort of times, I went for the popular religious debate, to stop the discomfort, to stop all this getting so personal. I talked about the temple dispute, baiting him into some sort of futile religious dispute as to which mountain we should have a temple on. Now, looking back though, I wonder if even this wasn't a subconscious cry for help, wondering deep down, if there was a God, where I might find him. You know what he replied?

He told me, that although the Jews were the chosen people, there would be a time when we would worship God, not on a mountain, but by being honest. Stripped down to the bare truth, with no more pretence, yet in this honesty we'd encounter the Spirit of God himself. And so I said " I know the Messiah is coming. And when he comes. I know he'll explain it all to us, there will be no more debates,we'll know." And that was when he said the thing that, deep down, if I'd been paying attention to my heart, I would already have known. Just three words. "I am he".

Of course he changed everything. His gentle acceptance worked wonders that no amount of persuasion could ever have done. He could have given me religious lectures, but they really wouldn't have done any good, I needed to discover God, discover answers, for myself. And that bright hope gave me the strength I needed to stop the others walking all over me, treating me like dirt, using me and then throwing me away as if I was worthless. Perhaps in an unspoken way that was why I went to the well in the first place that day, because I knew that somehow in a historical way there had been connection with God's story in that place.